Among all the many Chandos brass recordings, each release having played a major role in the label’s successful history, this one may well be the loudest. In the vast acoustic of St. Jude’s Church, London, rendered in surround-sound, and in the largest ensemble format to which it has ever expanded, Onyx Brass, under the energetic direction of John Wilson, brings together four dozen fanfares by fourteen British composers of the past century and a half. Including works by Arnold, Bax, Bliss, Imogen Holst, Ketelbey, and Tippett- with numerous premiere recordings, this album is an unmissable celebration of stirring, brilliant, joyous, exciting, varied, sometimes military, and always optimistic music.

This unusual recording brings princely offerings of two different kinds. In 1970 Prince Charles – who had studied cello and trumpet – was presented with a leather-bound volume containing pieces written for his entertainment by the composers on the council of the Performing Right Society. These fourteen bonnes bouches are complemented by fourteen German Lieder written by Prince Charles’ great-great-great-grandfather, Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, whose style owed something to that of his good friend, Felix Mendelssohn.